Lessons in feeling rooted even when you're not
Let's Get Lost, Issue #42: A special invitation, Hi Honey! Family recipes from Louisiana natives, Roasted mushroom pasta, The Ramos gin fizz cocktail + 2 fun ideas for gathering your people
Before we begin, I have a fun invitation!!! Let’s cook dinner together next week! Join my friend
and I LIVE, in real time while we make chicken enchiladas and Boho 76 cocktails!Tune in to watch or cook along! Here’s how to join us…
When: Thursday, April 17 at 6pm Central (CST)
How to join: Follow this link to join us on the 17th at 6pm central https://open.substack.com/live-stream/21702
All subscribers will also receive an email on the 17th right before we go Live with the link to join.
For those of you who want to cook along, here are the recipes:
Super easy chicken enchiladas: As we’ll talk about next week, these are endlessly customizable. Jenn and I did a test run earlier this week and you can see the cocktail and enchiladas she made (she filled hers with shrimp and crawfish!) in her latest post.
And here’s the recipe for Jenn’s Boho 76 cocktails:
If you can’t join us live, watch for the replay in next Saturday’s issue. This is our first foray into live streaming videos so it’s anyone’s guess what will happen! The only thing I can say for sure, is we are going to have so much fun.
Hi honey!
It’s a warm spring evening in northern Louisiana.
We are sitting around the table on Jack and Marsha’s screened porch having just finished a dinner of roasted carrot soup, braised pork chops, and mashed potatoes. The woods around us are literally brimming with life, bursting with buds and blossoms and bees and mosquito hawks and humming birds and cardinals and thousands of other flying, crawling, hopping, and scurrying things.
Everything is covered in pollen and our shoes betray our steps with trails of fallen flowers and leaves and other growing things no matter how many times we swipe our feet on the door mat.
Life is bursting forth in every direction, threatening to grow over and cover up everything that can’t fight back. It is tenacious and cannot be contained.
In the middle of all of this, our 23 year old daughter leans back in her chair, puffs out her stomach and starts jiggling it around making it talk to us in strange voices like it’s a happy little monster created by all the good food we’ve been eating. I cover my face with my hands and peer out at Jack and Marsha who are laughing so hard I think they might cry.
It is the 18th or 20th or 42nd meal at Jack and Marsha’s table and we are so comfortable here that even the most idiosyncratic (and maybe a little bit freakish) parts of our (Anne’s) personalities have settled in and made themselves at home.
We have, in fact, stretched out into every corner of Jack and Marsha’s life. Their kitchen and porch and laundry room and clawfoot bathtub feel as welcoming to me as my own home.
We’ve taken turns sleeping in their cozy Surveyor light travel trailer, first Steve and I while we ripped up and replaced the floors of our bedroom, then Anne as we ripped up and replaced the floors in the rest of the RV.
Marsha dragged a little table and chair set across the lawn and set it up outside the trailer’s front door, a jelly jar of cut flowers on the table, so Anne could sit outside and enjoy the view.
When it rained (and oh my does it rain in Louisiana), we created a makeshift sidewalk out of mats and discarded wood so we could (mostly) avoid trudging through the mud as we walk back and forth from Jack and Marsha’s to the front door of our RV.
Friends, renovating an RV while living in it is terrible. It is long days of contorting yourself into weird shapes in order to reach tight spaces. It requires constant problem solving and project creep, and so many trips to Lowes. It is sawdust and mud and pollen on literally everything you own.
It is constant searching for where you put the damn screwdriver and which basket contains the clean underwear.
Marsha said we were amazing (y’all are amazing!) to take on such a project in such a short amount of time and I replied that it’s much more likely that we are batshit crazy. But maybe those are two sides of the same coin?
Regardless, I am quite certain we couldn’t have done it - and remained somewhat sane and married - anywhere else besides at Jack and Marsha’s who never once made us feel like intruders even though that’s exactly what we were.
Not only did they let us take over their space, they introduced us to their friends. Their home is a revolving door of friends and family and there are people for dinner supper more often than not. Every night is supper club.
Marsha is the kind of person who finds treasure in everything. Her home is a gallery of sticks, stones, feathers, and all variety of discarded objects mistaken for trash before she cleaned them up and gave them a new life and this talent for treasure translates to people. We clatter in with all our sharp edges and broken pieces and look around to discover that we not only belong but are somehow beautiful there.
After a two week stay that stretched into three, we’ve moved on. But I’ve secretly given Marsha’s “Hi honey!” permanent residency in my mind so I can hear it whenever I choose, which is always.
In the rest of this issue:
Steve and I managed to get through all the big projects while at Jack and Marsha’s but are still working on details like trim and paint. “After” photos and (maybe) a video tour are still forthcoming. But, scroll down to see photos of our time at Jack and Marsha’s.
I spent an entire day in Jack and Marsha’s kitchen cooking three of their most treasured family recipes: Jambalaya, Persimmon Pudding, and Jackpot Beans. Scroll down for the recipes for Jackpot Beans and Persimmon Pudding. Look for Marsha’s Jambalaya in next week’s issue!
For Supper Club members (paid subscribers): You may recall the delicious Crab, Shrimp, and Crawfish Pasta recipe that my friend
served at the magical party she threw for us in February. This week I made a vegetarian version of that dish (with vegan options!) with cashew cream and roasted mushrooms and you’ll find the recipe in this issue. You’ll also find a recipe for the Ramos Gin Fizz, a frothy, fizzy cocktail that pairs perfectly with the pasta + two super fun and creative ideas for supper-club-adjacent gatherings (like puzzles and podcasts!). Supper Club members also receive downloadable pdfs of all the recipes in this and every issue.Reminder: Paid subscribers can get the new Let’s Get Lost Cookbook for just .99 cents.
We were lucky to be at Jack and Marsha’s during the two weeks a year that the wisteria are in bloom!
The chaos of renovation. This is what our main living area looked like while we replaced the floors in our bedroom. It got worse before it got better.
Annie and I spent a lot of time cooking together in Marsha’s kitchen. ❤️
Stain, oil, cut, stain, oil, cut. And repeat and repeat and repeat.
I turned Jack and Marsha’s kitchen into a photography studio - scroll down to see the finished photo of Jackpot beans!
The favorite family mug.
It started raining after Jack built a fire for marshmallow roasting which did not deter Anne from roasting them anyway. She is getting rained on, but the marshmallow is protected!
Steve took Marsha on a short motorcycle ride the day before we left!
Saying goodbye. 😭
Jackpot Beans
Over dinner one night, Jack told us the story of how he won a first place ribbon for his baked beans recipe.
The competition was fierce and all the contestants were serious about their beans. While they soaked dry beans and painstakingly stoked the fires, tending to their beans for many hours, Jack rolled in with 8 cans of beans, cooked them for a couple of hours, and took home the blue ribbon. 😂 The other contestants were livid, but the results speak for themselves.
The recipe, which was originally named Miss Mary’s Bean Pot, was renamed Jackpot beans and the rest, as they say, is history.
This really is an easy recipe but holy smokes does it ever deserve that blue ribbon. The beans need to cook for 3 hours, but the actual hands on time is only 30 minutes. Jack’s recipe makes a lot of beans but you could easily cut the recipe in half if you prefer.
12-16 servings
Total time: 3 1/2 hours
Ingredients:
2 tablespoons vegetable or canola oil
1 large yellow onion, peeled and diced
2 pounds salt pork and/or ham (see note)
Two 15-ounce cans Bush’s Best baked beans, any flavor, drained
Two 15-ounce cans pinto beans, drained
Two 15-ounce cans great northern beans , drained
Two 15-ounce cans kidney beans, drained
1 cup BBQ sauce (Jack’s recommended brand: Head Country Apple Habanero)
Instructions:
Heat the oven to 300 degrees F.
Add the oil and diced onion to a large skillet and set it over medium low heat. Cook, stirring every now and then, until the onions are soft and translucent, about 10 minutes.
If using ham, cut it into small cubes. If using salt pork, cut it into very thin slices.
Add all the beans to a large bowl and stir to combine.
Spread 1/3 of the beans into the bottom of a cast iron dutch oven. Top with 1/2 the onions and half of the ham and/or salt pork. Spread another 1/3 of the beans into the pan and top with the rest of the onions and the rest of the ham. Spread the remaining beans into the dutch oven and top with the remaining slices of salt pork.
Pour the BBQ sauce over the top of the beans and place the lid on the dutch oven.
Place the dutch oven in the center of the oven and bake for 3 hours.
Remove the lid and stir. Serve warm.
Recipe notes:
This recipe is especially delicious with both ham and salt pork, but only one or the other can be used.
Once baked, the beans will keep well in the refrigerator for up to 5 days.
Persimmon Pudding
All you have to do is look at this splattered, crinkled, worn recipe with all its hand written notes to know it’s going to be good.
Marsha’s sister-in-law gave her this recipe many years ago and you can see how well used it’s been! It’s not persimmon season, but Marsha had some frozen persimmon pulp in her freezer, so lucky us!
The consistency of this pudding is similar to bread pudding. It’s the kind of thing you scoop from the pan with a spoon rather than slice. The edges are similar to an exceptionally moist cake and the gooey pudding-like center is, I’ll admit, my favorite part.
And the creamy custard sauce is sweet and buttery and the kind of thing you might want to start pouring over everything.
Save this recipe for later - persimmons are in season in late fall and early winter. OR, try it sooner with peaches!
Serves: 6-8
Total time: 90 minutes
Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon table salt, OR 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 large eggs
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
2 cups very ripe peeled persimmon, mashed
8 tablespoons (4 ounces) unsalted butter, melted
1 cup whole milk
1 cup walnuts
Instructions:
Heat the oven to 300 degrees F. Smear the inside of a loaf pan with softened butter or vegetable shortening.
Add the flour, salt, baking soda, and cinnamon to a bowl and stir with a wire whisk to combine.
Add the eggs and sugar to a mixing bowl and beat with an electric mixer on medium speed for about 2 minutes. Add the mashed persimmon and beat on medium-low speed to combine, then beat in the melted butter and milk.
Add the flour mixture and beat on low speed until smooth. Stir in the walnuts.
Bake the pudding for 45-60 minutes. The pudding is done when cracks have formed along the edges of the pudding and is starting to pull away from the sides of the pan. The center will still appear quite soft and will likely be sunken slightly. The goal is for the pudding to be set around the edges but still gooey in the center.
Serve warm with custard sauce.
Creamy custard sauce
3 large egg yolks
2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups heavy whipping cream
1/2 cup unsalted butter, cut into 8 pieces
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
Add the egg yolks to a medium size heat proof mixing bowl and beat with a wire whisk for a few seconds to combine. Set near the stovetop. Also, if you have one, set a heatproof measuring cup near the stovetop.
Add the sugar, heavy whipping cream, and butter to a medium size saucepan and set it over medium-high heat. Cook, stirring frequently, until it just begins to simmer. Remove the pan from the heat and pour into the heat proof measuring cup.
Very slowly, pour the hot cream and sugar into the egg yolks, whisking constantly as you pour. Be sure to add the cream slowly so the eggs don’t scramble. Continue until all the cream has been added, then stir in the vanilla.
Pour the sauce into a covered container and store in the refrigerator until ready to serve.
Note from Rebecca: The original recipe does not include this but I like to add 1/4 - 1/2 teaspoon of salt to the custard sauce, stirring it into the sugar, cream, and butter.
Supper club
The rest of this issue is for Supper Club members (paid subscribers). It includes:
A vegetarian version of
’s Crab, Shrimp, and Crawfish Pasta made with roasted mushrooms and cashew creamA recipe for the Ramos Gin Fizz cocktail, a frothy, fizzy cocktail that pairs perfectly with the pasta. The recipe was inspired by this article in The Secret Ingredient newsletter about a NOLA inspired, James Beard award winning Brooklyn cocktail bar.
Two super fun and creative ideas for supper-club-adjacent gatherings
Downloadable (and printable) pdf recipe cards for every recipe in this issue
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